LAYE, CAMARA

born Jan. 1, 1928, Kouroussa, French Guinea [now in Guinea] died Feb. 4, 1980, Senegal one of the first African writers from south of the Sahara to achieve an international reputation. Laye grew up in the ancient city of Kouroussa, where he attended local Qur'anic and government schools before leaving for Conakry to study at the Poiret School, a technical college. Scholarship aid then enabled him to pursue an engineering course at Argenteuil, Fr. His autobiographical novel L'Enfant noir (1953; The Dark Child) recreates nostalgically his childhood days in Guinea in a flowing, poetic prose. The life he depicts in a traditional African town is an idyllic one in which human values are paramount and the inevitable alienation from the land that accompanies Western technology has not yet taken its toll. Upon his return to Guinea in 1956, he worked as an engineer for two years and then as director of a research centre for the Ministry of Information. During the next 10 years he wrote numerous short stories for such periodicals as Black Orpheus and Prsence Africaine. In 1954, Le Regard du roi (The Radiance of the King), the novel considered by some critics to be Laye's best work, appeared. It describes a white man's journey through the jungle in quest of an audience with an African king, and interpretations of its meaning vary from the human search for God to a journey into the unconscious, or a seeking after identity. Its nightmarish intensity is reminiscent of the works of Franz Kafka and of Amos Tutuola, the Nigerian writer. The sequel to L'Enfant noir, entitled Dramouss (1966; A Dream of Africa), is less nostalgic than its predecessor and much more heavily weighted with social commentary, because the chief character, returning to his native land after six years in Paris, finds that political violence has replaced the values and way of life he had so longed for when abroad. From 1964 Laye lived in exile in Senegal and worked as a research fellow in Islamic studies at the University of Dakar.